"A Peep into the Future of North-Western India.
India.
"I would fain enter a vehement protest against the spirit and the manner in which the relative positions of Great Britain and Russia are treated by Englishmen, and I hope to show the immense detriment to which this treatment has subjected, and still subjects, our prestige and our good name.
"We were lately asked by an educated native of Bombay if the Russians are not ready to throw fifty lakhs of men—five hundred thousand bayonets!—upon British India; and not a few of the lower classes, Mussulmans all, had told me that the 'Moskoff' is about to attack the Punjáb.
"Men now just middle age, whose youth saw the virulent attack of Russophobia which in 1838-39 led to the Afghan War, the severest shake, next to the Sepoy Mutiny, which our Indian Empire has ever endured, find it difficult, with the proverbial difficulty of mastering new ideas after the tenth lustre, to appreciate the complete change in the positions of the two great rival Powers. As early as 1791, Russia prepared to invade India from Orenburg, viâ Ashur, Ata, and Asterabad, 'the line of least resistance,' Meshhed, Herat, and Kandahar.
"Let us suppose that in 1835 she had taken heart of grace and resolved to follow in the footsteps of Nadir Shah. The road to Delhi lay completely open to her. She had only to point to India, the 'traditional plunder-ground of Central Asia,' and all the rugged robber-hordes, from the Sutlej to the mouths of the Euphrates, would have rushed to the 'loot' like wolves and vultures to the quarry, and Persia was only waiting to see the offensive action taken. Afghanistan was ever ready to renew the pleasant scenes of Paniput. The whole line of the Indus, Mooltan, Bahawulpore, and Sind, under the Talpúr Amirs, would have hurried to the flank attack. The direct line lay through the dominions of our good friend and bitterest enemy, Runjeet Singh, whose gallant heart was broken by the easy successes of the British in Afghanistan, where he flattered himself they had fallen into his trap. With the Punjáb would have sided Cashmere, Nepaul, and even Bhootan; in fact, the whole region south, and possibly north, of the Himalayan range.
"But Russia did not take the opportunity, which means she had other things to do; and that cautious, far-seeing Power saw no advantage in a raid like the 'Chapáo' of Nadir Shah. Now the conditions of our frontier are completely changed. From the modest line of the Sutlej and the great North-western Desert, we have occupied a thousand miles of the Indus frontier, extending from Peshawar to the sea; the Punjáb is ours; Cashmere, Nepaul, and Bhootan exist on sufferance; they may be ours at any moment we please.
"Persia might still join Russia, but we have operated more than once with fatal effect upon her vulnerable heel, the Gulf. Her strength has been wasted by famine; her exchequer is empty; and the chivalry of the Desert, her Iliyát or Bedawi, have been crushed by the contact of a so-called Regular Army. The Afghans would still flock to enrol under the banners of the North, but they would be met by their hereditary foe, the Sikh. How secure we are upon this point may be judged by the way in which the military authorities have dismantled the whole Indian fortress. Our native army has been converted into an irregular machine, which could not meet even the Abyssinians without sending for reinforcements of officers to Madras and Calcutta.
"The hare-hearted Sepoy—undoubtedly the worst soldier in Asia—has been reduced to eight European officers per regiment, with all the combatants mounted, so as to secure their being swept away by the first fire.